On the Use of Ocean Surface Doppler Velocity for Oceanic Front Extraction From Chinese Gaofen-3 SAR Data

Abstract

Oceanic front extraction from synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images is of great significance to the study of marine ecosystems. At present, the methods for oceanic front extraction are usually based on SAR intensity images, which treat oceanic fronts as edge-like features in the SAR images. However, affected by radar parameters and sea state, sometimes, oceanic front signatures may not be clearly visible in the SAR intensity images. Therefore, existing methods are limited. In order to solve this problem, a method combining intensity and Doppler information for oceanic front extraction is proposed. Using Chinese Gaofen-3 single-look complex (SLC) data, three cases where oceanic front signatures are clearly visible, partially visible, and extremely weak in the SAR intensity images are investigated, which demonstrate how the Doppler velocity gradient across a front can be leveraged to enhance the extraction of oceanic fronts from SAR data. The results show that the Doppler data, as supplementary information, not only can complement the oceanic fronts extracted from SAR intensity images, but also can be used as a reference for the oceanic fronts extracted from SAR intensity images.